


let the waters rise.

by outpastthemoat



Series: song of songs [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Biblical References, Canon Divergent, Hand Jobs, Implied abusive John Winchester, Intimacy, M/M, Magical Realism, Relationship Issues, Weather Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-18 17:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8170166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: When Dean thinks about it later, he could almost swear it had been raining the day Castiel left.  But the rain came after.  Castiel leaves on a day with no clouds, a day with golden sunlight warming Dean throughout.  It happens without warning, like lightning striking out of a clear blue sky. It’s raining when he throws his bags in the Impala and it’s raining when he turns on the interstate and it’s still raining when he hits the state line so he keeps on going.  Dean drives and it rains, so he turns on his windshield wipers and watches raindrops sliding down the windshield and flicking away into the gray air, and he just keeps thinking that this can’t be happening.  It just can’t.





	

**Author's Note:**

> And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. - Genesis 7:10

When Dean thinks about it later, he could almost swear it had been raining the day Castiel left. But the rain came after.  Castiel leaves on a day with no clouds, a day with golden sunlight warming Dean throughout.  It happens without warning, like lightning striking out of a clear blue sky.  

There isn’t even a fight.  Nothing that he can think back on and say, Oh yes, that was it.  That was the end.  Dean closes his eyes and Castiel is only an arm's length away, and Dean wakes up and he’s gone, and then Dean is sitting up and looking around the motel room for Castiel’s jacket, his keys and his wallet, and they aren’t there.  Castiel isn’t there.  He’s just gone, and Dean keeps thinking, over and over, This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.  

Castiel leaves and the skies open up and Dean hadn’t felt it coming, any of it.  Not the leaving.  Not the rain.  He hadn’t felt it in the old fractures in his left hand or the kneecap he’d busted fifteen years ago, he hadn’t felt it in the old broken bone in his leg that gives him a limp when rain’s on the way.  Nothing hurt until afterwards, and then it all hurt at once, every long-healed ache and pain of his flaring back to life. 

It’s raining when he throws his bags in the Impala and it’s raining when he turns on the interstate and it’s still raining when he hits the state line so he keeps on going.  Dean drives and it rains, so he turns on his windshield wipers and watches raindrops sliding down the windshield and flicking away into the gray air, and he just keeps thinking that this can’t be happening.  It just can’t.

 

* * *

 

Dean hurts.  He does the only thing he knows to do.  He drives and drives.  When he glances in the rearview mirror, he can see dark clouds hanging on the horizon.  

He stops in Huron, South Dakota for the night, and he’s sitting on the edge of the double bed and clicking on the television.  He’s hearing the weatherman say there’s nothing but rain from here to the coast, and his hands are cleaning his guns and his eyes are on the television's flickering screen, but really he’s just thinking, over and over, Was that it?  Was that the last time?  Last night, was that the last time he’ll ever kiss my cheek? Last night, was that the last time we’ll ever sleep in the same bed?  Was that the last time we’ll ever -

He shakes his head and looks down at his hands, his tired, aching hands.  He’s always on the verge of a last time when it comes to Castiel, this is nothing new.  He’s been here before.  A fortnight ago he’d been lying in his bed back home in Lebannon, listening to Castiel pack his bag.  Castiel would be leaving in the morning to rendezvous with a pair of hunters in south Texas, and Dean had been wondering if this was the last time they’d ever spend the night in this room together.  You think about those kinds of things, when you live this life.  You’re always wondering how much time you have left.

He’d thought, then, about saying Take care, or something like it, something that would let Castiel know that Dean wanted him to come back safe.  That Dean worried about him sometimes.  But Castiel had zipped up his worn gray duffle and shrugged it over his shoulder.  And looking at him standing in the doorway of Dean’s room, with his hand on the doorknob, Dean had lost his courage again.  He’d thought that if this was the last time he’d see Castiel like that, then he didn’t want to know.  

But he wants to know, now.  He has to know, so he can move on with his life.

He turns on his cell phone, holds it in his hand.  He could turn on the GPS on Castiel’s phone, track him down, burst into Castiel’s motel room just to ask, Are you done with me, or what?  Was it some kind of joke, leaving me like that? Do you really mean it?

But he thumbs his phone off again.  He can’t, he can’t.  He wants to know but he can’t ask.  He’s never been able to ask Castiel about anything important.  

Dean’s on the edge tonight.  There’s something wet and cold rising up inside him and he doesn’t want to feel it, doesn’t want to think about it.  He doesn’t want to know.  So he throws his things back in the Impala at the first light of day, and Dean drives and drives.

 

* * *

 

Dean drives, and fourteen days pass.  

Dean doesn’t know where the time goes.  He's reaching across the front seat for a cassette and his fingers are finding his phone.  He hasn't turned it on in days, not since...well, he might ought to turn it back on.  You never know who might've called him.

He turns it on.  There’s a missed call, three missed calls, fifteen missed calls.  His fingers are shaking a little when he dials his voicemail; the three fingers on his left hand haven’t been quite right since he was seven and Sam was three and their father had slammed the car door on his hand.  He didn’t mean it, Dean had said then.  It doesn’t hurt, he’d told Sam, and Sam had just looked at him with wet brown eyes and he’d swiped his hand across his face.  His hand hurts now.  Dean can’t straighten those three fingers out all the way anymore, those fingers curl back tight into his palm whenever it starts to rain.  Dean pops a couple of extra strength tylenol every time it rains, but it never helps.  

It’s Sam, all Sam.  He wants to know where Dean is.  So Dean calls him back, tells him he’ll meet him in Dove Creek in two days.  

Sam’s been holed up in a room miles outside of town, but he meets Dean in a diner in the heart of downtown that Sam swears up and down will serve you ribeye steaks for breakfast.   Sam looks at him strangely when he walks through the doors of the diner alone.  “Where’s Cas?” he asks.  It sets Dean’s teeth on edge.

“Gone,” Dean says.  He sits down in the booth Sam’s picked out.  He picks up the menu.

Sam's mouth is falling open, just a little.  “Gone, what do you mean, gone?”

“I mean he left, Sam.”

“Left what?  Your hunt?” Sam asks, bewildered.

“He left me.”

“Oh,” says Sam.  Dean doesn’t look up from the menu.  He thinks Sam might be working up to say something, but he doesn’t.  Sam’s a good brother.  He doesn’t tell Dean that Castiel will be back.  He doesn’t tell Dean that everything’s going to be okay.  Sam just folds a napkin and doesn’t say anything at all.  Then the waitress comes over and takes their orders, gets them their drinks, and then Sam is telling him about the case he’s working on, the twenty-year haunting of a river in Whitefish.  

“It’s the river near the cabin,” Sam tells him, “and the ghost is supposed to haunt one of the bridges somewhere in the county.  But I can’t figure out which one.”  

“I’ll take it, Dean says.

“You want it?” Sam asks hesitantly.  “You’re alone,” he points out.

“And you’re not?” Dean snipes.  

But then Sam’s smiling a tiny smile.  “Not right now,” Sam says.  

“Oh,” says Dean.  Sam tells tells him a little about her.  She’s pretty, he says.  And so smart, Dean.  She climbs mountains, just for fun.  Dean smiles, too.  He feels goosebumps on his arms that tell him there’s a cold front coming, blowing in with the rain.  He tells Sam he’s happy for him, and then they sit in their booth and watch the hard, steady rain falling outside the window.  

Sam has his hand on the check.   “What’s the forecast?” Sam asks.  “This weather gonna clear up anytime soon?”

“How should I know?”

Sam gives him a look.  Like little brothers do.  You know, Dean.  “What do your bones say?” Sam asks, all serious, like he’s a little kid again, like he still believes in Dean’s forecasts.  Like he’s six and Dean’s ten and they’re sitting in the car in another motel parking lot, waiting for Dad to cool down and pass out, and branches are blowing through the air and scraping against the sides of the car, but Dean’s whispering that it’ll blow over soon.  Five minutes tops.  His fingers say it won’t last much longer.  Dean holds Sam close and shakes out his three crooked fingers and he swears up and down that the wind’s blowing east, away from them.  That Sam should trust him, because Dean just knows about these things.

“They say better keep carrying an umbrella,” Dean says. And Sam nods, just like he believes him.

 

* * *

 

It keeps raining.  Dean keeps driving.  He's taking his time going north.  The Whitefish case isn't urgent, Sam keeps saying.  Take your time.  He's sending Dean case notes, scanned documents, old articles.  There's more every time Dean checks his email.  Thing is, Dean, I don’t have a date.  I don’t have a location.  it's just stories, mostly. But maybe you’ll be lucky, Dean.  

Yeah, Dean says.  Lucky.

Along the way Dean’s sitting in a motel in Colorado, reading a newspaper article about voices on a mountain.  He takes a detour.  

Dean hears more about it a few mornings later, in a gas station two towns over.  He’s pumping the Impala full of gas and his fingers ache, his knee aches, his leg aches.  The rain makes everything hurt.  The pinkie toe that’s been broken three times is throbbing inside his boot.  

He goes inside the gas station to pay and listens to the locals talk.  The mountain is haunted, people are saying.  Some heard voices coming from rocks, from trees, unnatural sounds.  The voices speak a language that no one can understand.  The fire won't go out-

It’s still raining, steady and gray and cold, but Dean doesn’t believe in umbrellas, never keeps one in the Impala even though it might be the sensible thing to do, so he has to hold his jacket over his head and run back out to his car.  He thumbs open his phone and tells Sam he’s got a case.

“I heard from Cas,” Sam says, hesitant.  “He-” Dean hangs up the phone.

Sam calls him back.  

“Cas is the next town over from you,” Sam says, without preamble.

Dean hits the brakes without thinking.  “Sam-”

“I've heard from him,” Sam says.  “I've been helping him with a case.  Now he’s right by you.  So.  I thought I’d tell you.”

“You’ve been talking?”

“Dean,” Sam says.  “Just-  It hurts to watch you like this.  It hurts to watch him like this.  He’s my friend too.”

Dean says.  "Fine.  Whatever."  

Dean drives, slow as the speed limit allows.  His windshield wipers are whipping back and forth but It's still hard to see through the rain.  The cars ahead of him kick up water from the road.  

He’s just outside the city limits before he’s in the thick of it.  There, on the side of the road into town, there’s a crowd spreading across the pavement.  Cop cars, orange tape.  Dean’s found something.  He's at the foot of the mountain, now.  Far up ahead he can see black clouds hanging low.  Smoke.  There are flames lighting up the side of the mountain even under all this rain. And there, in the crowd of people, he sees a brown coat and dark hair.  

He’s slamming on the brakes before he can think.  It’s not him, he tells himself.  It never is.  There are years and years under his skin, years he’s spent doing a double-take at every flash of brown coat out of the corner of his eye.  Years of feeling his heart jump inside his chest, in a sudden startled recognition.  He explained it to Sam, once.  About miracles, when they happen to you.  He’d told Sam that when there’s something terrible that’s happened, or something miraculous, it changes something in you.  You spend the rest of your life looking for whatever it was that happened in everything you see, everything you do, every place you go.  You’re always looking for it.  You’re always trying to understand.  

He looks twice and he can’t help it.  He never can.  He can hear his pulse in his ears.  He looks and looks.  It’s almost never him.  It almost never is.  But today is Dean’s lucky day.  

He pulls up slowly next to the crime scene, blinks a little at the flashing lights and their reflections in the raindrops collecting on his window.  Castiel must recognize him, because he’s nodding at a policeman and shaking hands and moving away.  

Castiel walks over to Dean’s car.  Dean rolls down the window, blinks a little at the spray of water that blows inside.  “Hey,” he says finally.  

Castiel squints at him.  There’s rainwater dripping from Castiel’s hair, from the cuffs of his coat.  “Hey,” Castiel says back.  “What are you doing here?”

“Think we’re on the same hunt,” Dean says.  He’s looking around.  He’s looking for a dull gold car among the black and white police cruisers, but there’s not one there.  “Where’s your car?”

“Back at the station.  I rode out here with the deputy.  There’s a wildfire.”

“Yeah, I see.  You gonna fill me in on what’s going on?” Dean asks.  

“It’s my case, Dean.”

“Well, it’s mine too.”

Castiel says, “It was mine first.  You shouldn’t even be here.”  He wipes the rain off his face and scowls.

There is something heavy pressing down on his chest.  Feels like those black clouds settling in low in the sky.  “Get in,” Dean says finally.  “You’re soaked.”

Castiel doesn’t even look at him the during ride back to his motel.  He is looking out the window. There's nothing to see.  Just gray, from here to California.  Dean can’t tell what he’s thinking.  He’s always been so careful to watch for Castiel’s moods.  He can always tell when Castiel is excited, by the way the corner of his mouth twitches as though he's about to smile.  He can tell when Castiel is somewhere else, missing something Dean can’t put a name too, by the way Castiel’s eyes drift past him like he’s not even there.  He knows all the shades of gray in between, all the currents of Castiel’s moods.  He’d thought he would know if Castiel wasn’t happy.  Dean had really thought he would know.  

It doesn’t even feel strange, this silence between them.  It’s always been there.  Dean can’t stop thinking, This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to go when you haven’t seen someone you love for weeks.  We're supposed to be laughing and kissing and grabbing each other.  Not sitting next to each other, quiet and afraid of touching. He should be kissing my neck and I should be saying Don’t make me drive off the road.  Not this.  I wish we were anything but this.

Maybe he should say something.  Be the one to break the silence.  Dean is dying to ask Why’d you do it? Why’d you leave me?  Was I not good enough, or something?  What did I do wrong?  Maybe it didn’t happen the way I thought.  Maybe you didn’t mean it like that.  Maybe it was some kind of stupid bullshit misunderstanding.

It’s on the tip of his tongue to just ask, already.  But Dean’s always been a coward.  He stays quiet.  

 

* * *

 

When they get to Castiel’s motel, they do what they’ve always done.  Everything falls into place.  Just like Castiel hadn’t up and left him without a word.  

Castiel carries one of Dean’s bags into the room and Dean gets a towel from the bathroom and tosses it to him.  Castiel takes off his coat and wipes his face on the towel.  He lowers the towel and sees that Dean is looking at him.

“Dean,” he says quietly, and that’s all it takes.  

There’s an edge to this.  There always has been.  Dean’s known soft sex, kind sex, smiles and laughter sex, but it’s never like that with Castiel.  Dean just takes and takes and hoeps he's giving enough of Castiel needs but never really knowing, and he can feel Castiel taking from him but giving nothing back.  It’s greedy.  It’s selfish.  But it’s all that Dean’s known, when it comes to this.  

He takes Castiel’s face in his hands and presses his lips to Castiel’s neck, and Castiel’s hands are crawling up underneath his hem.  Dean’s unbuttoning Castiel’s shirt and his fingers are shaking, they hurt so much.  The way they do whenever lightning starts striking not too far off.  It's that damned rain.  He pushes Castiel’s shirt off his shoulders and thunder is rattling the glass in the windows.  He tries to pry loose the buttons on his own shirt, but it’s his fingers.  His fucking fingers.  They won’t stop shaking.  

Castiel can see.  He touches Dean’s shaking hands so very lightly Dean almost can’t feel it.  Dean stands still and then Castiel is taking apart his buttons, oh so carefully, and then Castiel is pushing the collar off his neck so he can kiss the hollow of Dean’s throat, and then the window is lit up, blue and black, with lightning cracking behind the glass, so close Dean can feel the hair on his arms standing straight up.  

He wants to stop Castiel and take him by the arms and shake him.  Do you feel that? he wants to ask Castiel.  Do you feel that rattling in your bones like I do?  Do you feel what it’s like when we’re together this way?  How could you leave this?  

But Dean’s a coward, he always is.  His hands are shaking and his thighs are trembling and Castiel is pushing him up against the wall and Dean is thinking, What if I never feel this way again, what if I’ll only ever feel this way with him, and he is afraid.  He cries out, and the lightning strikes, and something outside bursts into sparks.  The room goes dark.  

Dean feels Castiel shaking against him.  And for the first time, Dean wonders if Castiel is afraid too.

 

* * *

 

Castiel’s coat is hanging off the back of the chair.  The carpet is wet where the rest of Castiel’s clothes hit the floor.  Dean sits on his bed, lets his hands hang between his knees.  He’s watching the way rain drips off Castiel’s coat onto the faded brown carpet.

“So what’s going on?” he asks finally.  “Everyone is talking about miracles.  Burning bushes.  People hearing voices coming from trees and rocks.”

“There’s a ghost,” Castiel says.  “Not just any ghost.  An angel died on that mountain three months ago.  And now another man has gone missing.”

Dean feels a tremor in his hands.  The storm is pulling back, but in the distance he can still see those flashes of light, miles and miles away.  He tells himself they can’t hurt him anymore.  They can’t hurt him here.  Dean still can’t get used to storms.  Sam’s always liked them.  Sam’ll stand on the Bobby’s porch in the middle of a thunderstorm and revel in the lightning and thunder.  He tells Dean he likes it because for once something’s happening that he can really feel.  Sam likes it when it rains hard on the highway, until you can’t see through the windows, until the traffic slows and stops moving because no one can see each other’s headlights in the downpour.  He likes the rain beating against the roof of the Impala and rain squealing under the tires when they hydroplane.  

“So we have to exorcise the ghost of a fallen angel,” Dean says.  “You got a plan for that?”

Castiel looks at him.  “Not yet.  I’ve been thinking.”

Dean can’t look back.  He wants Castiel warm and yielding under his hands again.  It had almost seemed like everything was all right, then.  He wants to close his eyes and pretend like nothing’s wrong.  He wants to lean back against the pillows and feel Castiel settle against his side.

“Tell me tomorrow,” Dean says.

 

* * *

 

Castiel takes him out to the mountain in the morning.    

There’s still yellow tape fluttering in the wind along the side of the road, but the police cars are gone, the crowd is gone.  Dean looks beyond the tape, to where the blackened, charred treeline moves farther and farther up the mountain until it turns into whitecaps.  There’s black smoke rising into the sky, even though it’s still drizzling, just a light rain that makes wipe his face every few minutes.  

“A wildfire,” Castiel says.  “It started the night the angel died.  They say he was on the mountain when lightning struck.”

“Who says?” asks Dean, and Castiel squints at him.  

“Eyewitnesses,” he says.  “They can’t put it out, they’re tried for months, Dean.  But it doesn’t spread, either.  It’s just there.  A forest on fire.”

“How do we stop it?”

Castiel takes a long time to answer.  “I don’t think we can.”

Dean can’t take his eyes off the burning mountain.  You can see the fires from this great distance, you can see where the trees are black and dead.  “Then what are we doing here?”  

“Angels weren't meant to fall to earth,” Castiel says.  “Angels weren’t meant to live like this.  I don’t know if they even can.  They weren’t supposed to fall.  They weren’t supposed to be here.  This place isn’t for them, Dean.  And there’s so many of them, and they are all in pain.  Because of me.”  

“Cas.”

“You can still hear him crying, praying to God.  He wanted to die,” Castiel says.  “My brother wanted to die, so he came to this mountain and begged for his death.  His pain has scarred the earth.  It’s not something man can erase.  All we can do is bear witness.”

“And the vic, from last night?”

“They hear the voices,” Castiel says.  “They can feel the pain.  And they want to get closer and closer.  Like moths.  It’s the closest they’ll ever get to God.”

Dean keeps thinking he should say something.  Do something.  He has touched Castiel’s body, he has drawn his hands up and down Castiel’s chest and he has kissed the tender underside of Castiel’s neck and you would think he could reach out and place his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, now.  You would think that he could offer him some kind of touch.  Some kind of comfort.  But Dean keeps thinking, He wouldn’t want it.  He’d push my hand away.  It’s not me he wants.  So he shoves his hands inside his pockets and he stands there for as long as Castiel remains there, looking up at the mountain with that light rain falling into his face and hanging in his lashes.  There’s thunder in the distance, but Dean ignores it.  He thinks it’ll blow over long before another storm reaches them.

 

* * *

 

Castiel’s not saying much tonight.  He’s quiet when Dean unbuttons his shirt and he’s quiet when Dean pulls it off his shoulder and he’s quiet when Dean presses a line of kisses down his neck, but his eyes fall shut and his head falls back.  

This isn’t right, Dean is thinking.  We should be banging the headboard against the wall.  The neighbors should be complaining. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Dean’s thinking of all the things he wants to tell Castiel, has always wanted to tell him.  That he has beautiful hands.  That Dean loves his smile.  But he stays quiet. He kisses Castiel’s collarbone, kisses his shoulders, and then Castiel is taking his hands and pulling them away.  

“This isn’t working,” he says, and Dean knows it’s the end, really and truly.  “It hasn't been working for a long time.  We can’t do this, Dean.”

There’s a roaring in his ears.  The sound you hear when you put a seashell against your ear.  The sound of water rushing over your head when you dive headfirst into a pool.  “So it’s really over?” Dean asks, over that terrible roaring.  “You’re really leaving me?”

Castiel pushes his hand deep inside his pocket.  When he takes it back out, he has his keys in his hand.  He says, “Dean, we were never together.”  

His hands are aching.  Like it’s gonna start pouring all over again.  His knee is aching, his leg is aching.  His eyes are aching, the way he remembered feeling like he was about to cry, from years and years ago.  But he hasn’t cried in years.  He doesn’t think he could if he tried.  He doesn’t remember how.  He doesn't seem to have what other people posses that allows them to release their fear and sadness.  All he knows is that he is missing something important.  Something vital.  Something you shouldn't have to live without.

 

* * *

 

Dean sleeps alone that night, listening to the rain hitting the rooftop.  It rains all through the morning and the evening and when Dean wakes up alone in his bed again, it’s still raining. It rains steadily, without stopping, and Dean doesn’t care.  Doesn’t give one single damn.  He just stays in bed and listens to the rain.

When he wakes up again, he pushes back the covers and stumbles over the window, pushing back the blinds.  It’s still raining outside, a fine, light mist.  He’s looking for the Continental, right where it should be, parked just outside their motel room.  But it isn’t there, and he just keeps thinking, This can’t be it.  This can’t be over.  This can’t be happening.  But Castiel is still gone.

 

* * *

 

Dean drives.  He loses time.  He closes his eyes in a room in Nevada, three days after Castiel leaves, and when he opens them again it’s been four months.  He’s in Whitefish.  And his head feels clear for the first time since it started raining.  

He limps around the cabin, as much as he can.  His leg's acting up again.  It makes it hard to get around, hurting like this.  Dean had never thought of old age, never thought of heart attacks or arthritis.  He'd never held himself back.  He's thrown himself against demons, minor dieties, apocalypses head-on, like some kind of weapon, forcing himself in the thick of it like a shield, but he'd never considered that there could be a price other than death.  He hadn't known it could hurt so much just to live with old battlewounds.  

Sam calls and asks him on a hunt.  Vampires, Dean, he cajoles, like it's a treat.  Dean says no. No more cases, Sam.  Just no. It hurts to move.

"Your bones?" Sam asks.

Yes, Dean says.  All of them.  My whole body, Sam.  I just can't.

"It's atmospheric pressure," counsels Sam, like he knows.  "You've had crap luck, stuck in Montana during this season.  It'll stop raining sometime.  And you'll be fine then."

Dean tells Sam he knows he's right.  It'll blow over soon.  It can't rain forever.

 

* * *

 

Castiel calls one night.  

Dean doesn't answer right away.  

He sits there looking down at the phone in his hand, thinking, I shouldn’t.  He said it was over.  I believed him, fuck.  But Dean’s a coward.  He can’t live with not knowing whatever Castiel might have said to him.  Even if it’s a drunk dial.  Even if it’s all business, all ghosts and ghouls.  He has to know.

I need you, Castiel says.

And Dean’s a coward, so he goes.

 

* * *

 

He meets Castiel in a town outside of Spokane.  The skies are clear right now, but Dean’s hands are aching.  He’s beaten the rain just by a little bit; Dean can feel it blowing in behind him, close on his heels.

Castiel is waiting for him in a restaurant on the main drag through town.  The door jingles when Dean walks through it.  He looks across the room and sees Castiel’s dark head bent over a newspaper in a booth by the window.  

“What’s the weather report?” he asks Castiel.

Castiel is frowning at the newspaper.  “It says partly cloudy,” he reports, but Dean is curling his fingers, pressing them into his palm.  

“It’s going to rain,” Dean says.

“It says there’s only a ten percent chance of showers in Spokane today.”

“Nah,” says Dean.  He unzips up his coat.  “It’s gonna rain.”

“How do you know?” Castiel asks.  He sounds curious.

“I just know.”

“But _how_ do you know?”

Dean shrugs.  “I can feel it in my hands,” he says.  “Where I broke the bones.”  That’s what he’s always said to Sam, and Sam had always bought it.  But it’s not true.  He doesn’t just feel it in his bones.  He feels it behind his eyes, like a the beginnings of a headache, every time it rains.  He can feel heat spread over his skin when there will be clear skies and sunshine.  And he can feel the gray skies and fog like goosebumps up and down his arms.

“Oh,” says Castiel.  He’s still frowning.  “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“You asked,” says Dean.  “You asked me.”  He’s feeling colder and colder.  He’d been thinking, all that long drive over, that Castiel wanted to talk to him about something important.  About what happened between them.  About why he’d left, and then left again.  But Castiel is just sitting here, talking about the weather.  Like all he’d needs is an extra set of hands to hold a shotgun on a hunt.  Like anybody would have done.  

“There’s this case,” Castiel says.  He hesitates.  “I’m looking for something.”

“And you need me to help you look.”  

“Yeah.”

“Sam’s got good eyesight.”

Castiel is frowning at him now.  “I needed you.”

Dean says, “What’s your case? You think it’s angels again?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.”

“Angels in pain, like the other?”

“If not an angel,” Castiel says, “then something else.  But yes.  Something in pain.  Impossible things happen when someone is in pain.”  

Dean can't stop rubbing his fingers.  He hurts all over.  “You'd better take an umbrella,” Dean advises.

Castiel squints up at the sky.  “Rain?” he says dubiously, but Dean can feel it all over, the slow ache that is spreading behind his eyes.  

It rains.

 

* * *

 

Castiel takes him out to a small green creek.  

The water’s so clear you can see all the rocks at the bottom, all the way down to the sand and pebbles.  You can see raindrops striking the water.  Dean can’t stop looking.  It’s so clear, you don’t even see your own reflection.  All you see is what’s there.  

“What are we looking for?” he asks Castiel.  

“You’ll know when you see it,” Castiel says, cryptic.

“Angels?”

“Maybe.”

Dean gives up.  

“Don’t you feel anything?” Castiel asks.

“Not the way you mean,” Dean says.

Castiel steps into the creek.  The water looks shallow.  You’d think it would only cover his ankles.  You can see down to the rocks of the creek bed that the water is only a few inches deep.  But Castiel goes further, a few steps in and it’s deeper and deeper and all at once Castiel is wet up to his shoulders, with the rain pelting down on his head, and suddenly Dean is afraid, watching him sinking underneath the water.  

“Come back,” he calls, and for a moment he thinks Castiel might not turn around.  That he might keep coming until his head disappears under the water and he sinks to the bottom.  But Castiel turns his head.

“Do you see?” Castiel asks.  He turns around and walks back slowly.  One step back towards shore and the water receeds to his waist, another and the water trickles back down to his ankles. “This is an impossibility.  This shouldn’t happen.”

The wind is picking up.  Dean wraps his arms around his chest.  But Castiel doesn’t seem to notice, even though he is soaked up to the collar of his shirt.

“What happened?” asks Dean.

“An angel killed himself here.”

“Why would an angel do that?  Why would he want to die?”

“I think,” Castiel says, “that I’m beginning to understand.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a stiffness in his shoulder that never quite goes away, not after five dislocated shoulders and one fractured clavicle.  It’s worse, sometimes, when cold weather’s coming.  Dean’s thinking about Castiel’s warm, rough hands sliding up and down his back, rubbing at his shoulders. He glances at Castiel. Maybe he could ask him to do that for him. Even if they’re not together, or whatever.  But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t.  He thinks Castiel would do it, if he only asked.  But he can’t.

Castiel directs him back to his motel.  Dean doesn’t get out of the car right away.

“You asked for me.  You wanted me here.  So what are we now?” Dean asks.

Castiel looks at him strangely.  “We are what we’ve always been, Dean. Two people.”

Two people.  Not two people, together.  Two people apart?  He’s afraid to ask.  He shakes his head.  Hugs his arms round his chest, holds them there tight.  “I just thought-”   It was stupid, what he’d thought.  

Castiel is looking down at his hands in his lap.  His mouth falls open.  He’s sighing.  But he puts his hand on Dean’s elbow and leaves it there, slides his hands up Dean’s arms like that was all the invitation he needed and kisses Dean’s neck.  Dean lowers his head and presses his lips against Castiel’s throat and closes his eyes.  The stiffness in his shoulder is easing away, with Castiel’s warm hands running up under his jacket.  Dean is glad of it.  He doesn’t feel cold now that Castiel’s hands are holding him.

He takes Castiel’s hands and pulls him out of the car, up the stairs and down the halls of Castiel’s motel.  Slides his hands into Castiel’s pockets for the room key, and Castiel doesn’t stop him.  Dean pulls him through the door, inside the room.  He pulls at Castiel until he can feel the bed pressing against the back of his knees and then they fall down together.

Dean slips his finger in the waist of Castiel’s jeans and runs his finger along the warm skin there, then slides his hand down and pops the button.  He takes Castiel’s cock in his hand, slides his fingers up and down until Castiel is gasping his name.  Like he really loves Dean, or something.

Dean holds him, just like that, and Castiel slides his hands up Dean’s thighs and holds him too.  And they come just like that.

When they’re finished, Castiel does something he’s never done before, and bends his head and rests it against Dean’s.  He brings his fingers up to Dean’s face and touches him, right on the cheek.  Just like he really loves Dean.  Just like he really knows what love is at all.  Just like they haven’t been doing all kinds of horrible things to each other.  Dean’s thinking about how he’s never even held Castiel’s hand. Not even afterwards, in bed next to him. How strange that they can share so much between them and not feel any closer.

Castiel’s fingers stroke up and down his cheek, and the ache is back again.  Dean’s thinking about angels, angels hurting.  Angels dying.  If Castiel would stick with him, he could watch out for him.  Keep a close eye on him.  Make sure that whatever happened to those angels doesn’t happen to him.  But Castiel is planning on leaving again.  He can see it in the stiff way Castiel stands up to button his pants and button up his shirt.  His shoulder aches.  Dean can feel the cold coming on, settling into his bones.  

“I missed you,” Dean says.  He can see his breath, hanging between them in the air.  

The sheets between them are freezing.  It’s so cold Dean can feel ice on his lips when he bends over and kisses Castiel.  

Dean is lying awake that night, right on the edge of the bed, shivering.  Castiel is lying next to him and Dean is trying not to touch him and he doesn’t know why, just that he’s got to keep his arms to himself and his legs to himself; he doesn’t know if Castiel is awake or asleep, and he doesn’t want to find out.  He is so cold.  He is so cold, and somewhere deep in his heart he knows this isn’t how it should be.  This isn’t the way you act when you are in love.  

In the morning the window is frosted over. Dean rolls over and Castiel isn’t there.  He opens his eyes and sits up.  The water in glass on Castiel’s nightstand is a solid block of ice

Castiel is standing in the doorway.  He’s wearing the faded gray jacket Dean had bought him a few months ago at the Salvation Army store in Topeka.  He’s got his keys in his hands.  

“We should just stop,” Castiel says. “I don’t want you like this.  It's not right.  We don’t even love each other.  We just have sex sometimes.”

“Cas-”

“i shouldn't have called you," Castiel says.  "I shouldn't have done it.  We shouldn't do it again."

 

* * *

 

It rains.  It rains in White River City and Sweetwater Station, it rains in Missoula and Lonepine, all the way back to Whitefish.  Castiel doesn’t call for a week, a month.  Then it’s been three months of silence and Dean’s on edge.  He’s aching for something.  For someone.  He turns up the radio but it’s still too quiet.  And Dean’s a coward, he can’t take this kind of quiet.  He’s thinking, I wasn’t ready for this to be over.  I wasn’t ready to be without him.  Without Castiel.  Dean aches for him, for his silent presence in Dean’s bed, for his dark head leaning up against the passenger side window on long hauls.  Dean aches for Castiel’s hands on his body at the end of a long day.

Dean’s a coward.  He always has been.  Dean calls him up.  

“Tell me why,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me why we don’t love each other.”

“Dean-”

"Tell me, Cas."

“I don’t think I know what love is,” Castiel says unhappily.

Dean hunches his shoulders a little.  It makes him feel strange when Castiel talks like this.  Uncomfortable.  “Baby don’t hurt me,” Dean says.  

“Don’t do that,” Castiel says.

“Do what?” Dean asks, bewildered.

“Make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you.  Jesus.”

“I’m trying to talk to you.  To tell you something,” Castiel says, “and you’re not even paying attention.”  He sounds -  not angry.  Hurt, maybe.  Dean hadn’t really thought he had the power to hurt Castiel like that.  “Dean, I lost my grace.  Do you know what that means?”

“You don’t need your grace,” Dean insistts.  “You’re fine just the way you are.”

Castiel says, “No, I’m not.  I lost my grace, and I don’t have a replacement for it.”   

Castiel tells him about being worried about not feeling things, but Dean feels things and can’t even say those things out loud.  It’s stupid, or something.  But he tries, anyway.  “I miss you,” Dean says.  He doesn’t know if he’s being honest.  Maybe he doesn’t miss Castiel at all.  Maybe he’s just dreaming about what might have been between them, before all the ugly.  

Castiel just says, “Goodnight, Dean." 

He sits up that night, sharpening his knives.  He accidentally slices his hand on a blade, but Dean doesn’t cry.  He never does.

 

* * *

 

Four days later, Dean answers the phone and it's him.

“Dean.”

“What do you want?”

“I didn't mean to.  I said I wouldn't.  But I wanted to know if you were all right.”

“Why would you care about that?”  

“I just wanted to know.  You sounded...not good.  Last night.”

“I’m fine.  That's all you wanted to talk about?”

There's a pause.  “Yeah,” Castiel says finally.

“Bye,” Dean says.

“Bye.”

Dean hits end call and just sits there on the bed for a while.  He's looking out the window.  there's nothing to see, just rain fogging up the glass.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me a story,” Castiel says when Dean answers.

“Why do you want a story?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Me either.”  So Dean begins, a little haltingly.  He's thinking about the rain outside, the lightning forking right outside his window.  He tells Castiel about the storm that had passed through Lawrence the night of his mother’s funeral.  An EF-3, he says.  He’s remembering that night, the motel room they stayed in for five months after the house burned, he’s remembering listening to the sirens going off in town, how Sam had slept through the noise but how Dean had slipped out of his cot and gone to the edge of his father’s bed and pulled on the bedsheets.

Dad, dad, he’d said, shouldn’t we go?  He tells Castiel that his father had just said, Ignore it.  It’ll be fine, and he'd just passed back out.  And Dean had put his head under his sheets and his fingers in his ears but he could still hear the sirens.  He could still hear the branches of the trees beating against the roof and windows.  He could still hear the glass breaking when the storm hit the houses on the next street over, the shriek of metal bending and ripping, the silence after a tree comes crashing down.  It’s not real, he’d said over and over.  It's not real.  It can't hurt you.

He hadn’t expected it, hadn’t hoped for it, but Castiel calls him up the next night.  He asks about Sam.  He tells Dean a little about his case.  

“What are you doing right now?” Castiel asks.

“Working a case,” Dean tells him.  

Castiel hesitates.  “Do you need any help?”  

It’s on the tip of his tongue to say no.  He shouldn't.  He shouldn't.  Castiel said so.  But Dean just can’t.  He doesn’t have it in him.  So instead he says, “Come on.  I’m at the cabin.”

And Castiel says, "I'm on my way."

 

* * *

 

There's a break in the rain for a few days after that.  There's not much that hurts.  Dean walks around without a limp, whistles to himself.  He's forgotten what the world is like when the sky isn't gray.  

But there are dark clouds on the horizon when Castiel arrives.   Castiel is going to beat the storm, he thinks, but only just.  And Castiel pulls down the gravel driveway just in time for the sky to open up again.  He watches Castiel jogging slowly to the cabin, with his jacket over his head.  He can still see the clouds.  But something pleased and warm and golden is trickling through him.  Maybe it’s gonna be nice today.  Maybe the rain’ll pass over for once.  Maybe the sun’s going to shine.  It’s a nice thought.  

He takes Castiel inside the cabin, gets him a glass of water.  Castiel drinks it slowly.  The ice cubes at the bottom of the glass clink together when he sets it down.

"What's the case?" Castiel asks, and Dean hands him the clipboard of papers he’s been putting together for the last few weeks with the research Sam keeps sending him.  There isn’t much to go on.  There’s supposed to be a haunted bridge somewhere in this county, but sources can’t agree on where it is.  Some of the papers say the bridge is off Jack Glass Road, others say Gratis or Old Atha.  

Dean sticks his finger on the road map.  “Here’s Jack Glass.  Here’s Gratis.  Different roads, but they all cross the same river, the one we’re on.  Figured I’d just zigzag back and forth until I found some candidates.”

“Okaaay,” Castiel says slowly.  “Are you sure this is a case?”

“It might be a wild goose chase,” Dean says to him, folding up the map, “but I’m hunting geese.  You coming?”

Castiel says, “I will.”

Castiel takes over as navigator.  He spreads open the map and drags his finger down as far south as the river goes the county.  “Let’s start at this end, and work our way up,” he suggests.

The first road that crosses the river is Pearlman Road.  They drive slowly down the road.  No bridge.  They try Jack Glass next.  They drive it all the way from beginning to end.  It meets the river at a low spot but doesn't cross.  No bridge.  

But there's a bridge on Gratis.  Still there, still standing, though the middle of the bridge looks rotten; boards are broken and missing.  Dean parks the Impala off the side of the road and they sit and wait.  

Dean tells him the story of the bridge's ghost, the way he’s heard it from local teenagers.  Twenty years ago, there was a man, he says, and there was a woman, and they were in love.  But they had a fight, and the man left.  It was raining, and the creek was flooded, and the man tried to drive over this bridge.  He didn’t make it.  

“What happened to the woman?”

She waited all night with a light in the window.  When morning came, Dean told him, she saw the creek at her doorstep, and she went outside to meet it.  They say her body drifted away to find his.

“That’s a sad story,” Castiel says.  “But it’s not true.”

“Why do you say that?”

“We’ve sat here all night, and nothing’s happened.”

“It sounds true,” Dean says anyway.  “I think it might have happened.”

Castiel’s looking up at the sky, like he’s the one who can predict the weather.  “You can believe it if you want,” Castiel says.  “You’re hunting a ghost that doesn’t exist.”  There rain has stopped, but little drops of water hit his windshield every now and then.  Dean turns the windshield wipers on and off again.  They sit for long time.  

Then Castiel says, “Dean.  There’s nothing haunted about this place.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dean says.  “There’s always a ghost.  Always.”

“Not this time,” Castiel says.  He sounds certain.

“There’s not even a spec of EMF,” Dean says finally.  “Goddamn.”

Castiel unlocks his door and steps out.  He walks out onto the bridge, puts his hands on the rail and looks down.  And after a moment, Dean joins him.  There are rotting boards underneath their feet.  You could put a foot through and go right down into the water.  “You’re right,” Dean admits finally.  “Nothing.  Jesus.  I guess it just makes a good story,” Dean says.  “It looks haunted, anyway.”

Castiel looks over at him.  Dean does know what that look means, but he’s pretending he doesn’t.  But god.  He wants to.

“This night doesn’t have to be a complete waste,” Castiel says.  “Dean.  Why did you call me?”  

“I told you why.  I missed you.  Don’t you miss me? Castiel, we were-” he’s stumbling over his words, trying to figure out what he means.  “We were something, for a long time.  And then you just decided we were through.  And I wasn’t ready.”

“You called me, tonight,” Castiel repeats.  “Dean, why?”

Dean shows him why.

Dean lays him down on the old bridge and sucks kisses into his neck until three a.m.  Then it’s three-thirty and then it’s four, and Dean is looking for his boot and Castiel is looking for his tie, and there is dirt and moss and twigs on the seats in Dean’s car.  When he turns on the engine and the lights on the dash come on, he can see that there are leaves in Castiel’s hair.  He almost puts out a hand to run through Castiel’s hair, but his hand touches the curls on the back of Castiel’s head and then just settles down on his neck. Castiel is sort of leaning into him, like he wants to be closer.  Like he wants something more.  But that’s stupid.  They just had sex.  You can’t get any closer than that.

“We should head back,” Dean says finally.  The rain is drizzling again.  More drops of rain are falling, so he turns on the windshield wipers and backs up careful around the gully and gets them back to the main road.  

It’s a little damp outside that morning.  There’s a fine misty drizzle in the air.  It will pour for days afterward.  Dean just knows.  He can feel it all over.  The clouds roll in and settle down low across the horizon.

“Why didn’t we work out?” Dean asks.  “Remind me again.”

“Because,” Castiel says, “there never was an us.  Just me trying to get what I wanted and needed, and you trying to get what you wanted and needed, and neither of us ever looking out for each other.  That’s why.”

“Think we could change?  If we tried?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel says.  “I don’t think so.  We’re different, Dean.  I’m so old, and I don’t how to change.”

“You could, if you tried,” Dean says.  “But you never try.”

“That’s not true,” Castiel says.  He’s frowning.  “I tried.”

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” Dean says.  He drives Castiel back to the cabin and the whole way there he’s trying to think of something to say.  This is the kind of thing you’re supposed to talk about.  But he can’t find the words.  It’s like all the life in him has drained out of his body.  He feels colorless.  He doesn’t know what to say.  His eyes can’t focus on anything.  That’s how he knows that there’s a fog settling in.  It’ll be there for days, fog in the morning when he opens the blinds covering the kitchen window, fog drifting back in every evening, making hollow tunnels out of the Impala’s headlights on the interstate.  

Castiel opens the door before Dean’s even put the car in park.  “Thanks,” he says again.

“No problem,” Castiel says.  

“You gonna spend the night?” Dean asks anyway.

Castiel shakes his head.  “I’ve got to go.”

“Fine.”

He almost puts out a hand, on Castiel’s shoulder, his arm, his knee.  To make him stop and stay just a little longer.  Maybe if Dean did that, it would change something.  Make all the ice between them melt. Make Castiel dissolve into his arms, push Dean back against the back seat, and maybe afterwards they could talk.  Like real people do.  But he doesn’t.

Castiel is frowning.  “Did you want to say something?”

“Just- Stay safe.  Will you do that for me?”

“Of course,” Castiel says.  “You, too.”

“See you later,” Dean says.  He watches Castiel slide out of the Impala and he’s thinking, abstractly, How can this be happening?  We were so happy.  We really were, for a moment.

Dean sits in his car and watches the rain fall, watches the way Castiel ducks under his jacket and jogs to his car.  He watches raindrops splatter on the windshield and leave cold gray streaks on the glass and watches the Continental's headlights flood the driveway with light.  He wonders how long it’ll be before he hears from Castiel again.  

Dean doesn't say anything else, he just swipes a hand across his face and hits the gas.

 

* * *

 

It rains and Dean drives and Castiel doesn’t call for weeks, then months.  Then it’s been three months since he’s heard from Castiel, and he’s starting to wonder if maybe something bad's happened.  He thinks he would know, if it had.  Surely Sam would say something, if Castiel was in trouble.  His head is aching as if there’s rain on the rain on the way, and he doesn’t know why he does it, but he picks up his phone and calls Cas.

Castiel actually answers.  “Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

There’s silence on the line.  This was probably a bad idea, but Dean needs something.  He needs to feel close to someone.  He needs to be listened to and talked to.  And he wants that someone to be Castiel.  Even if they’ve never been good together.  Even if they’ve never really been together.  They’ve done all right at talking, before.  Not always.  But there have been times when it just seemed so easy to get Castiel alone in the car with him and say something real.  Something with meaning.  And to have Castiel hear him, and say something back.  Dean hopes and prays this is one of those times.  He suddenly can’t bear to sit through five minutes of this stilted small talk.  How’s the weather, Castiel will ask, and Dean will say Fine, and Castiel will ask about Sam, and Dean will ask how’s his car running, and Castiel will ask about his case.  And then they’ll hang up, and it will be just like it hadn’t happened.  Nothing had changed because of their conversation.  Neither of them will go away from it feeling richer.  So Dean says, without preamble, “Do you remember the first time?”

“The first time of what?” Castiel wants to know.

Dean hedges, “You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“The first time we were together.”

"Oh."  Castiel goes quiet.  “Yeah,” he says.  

“Tell me about it.  What you remember.”

“Why, Dean?”

“I just want to remember with you.”

Castiel sighs into his ear.  “Okay,” he says.  “We were hunting.  I don’t remember where.”

“Des Moines.”

“Des Moines.  And afterward we couldn’t sleep, so we went to that restaurant you like and had breakfast even though it was three a.m.”

“Denny’s.”

“Denny’s.  And you taught me how to play gin rummy, and we drank coffee, and we were talking.”

“What did we talk about?”

“I don’t remember,” Castiel says.  “But then we paid the waitress and went back to the car and you opened my door and then you kissed me.  And you said you’d always wanted to do that.”

“And what happened then?”

“I kissed you back.  And we got in the car and we were kissing all the way back to your motel room, and we parked in the parking lot and you kept kissing me.  And then the next morning, you woke me up, kissing me, and you said Good morning.  And when I left you told me until next time.”

“That was a good night,” Dean says.

“Yeah,” Castiel says.  “It was a good night.”

“I’m glad you remember.”

“I couldn’t forget that, Dean.”

“Good.  I’m glad.  Make sure you don’t forget.”

"I won't," Castiel says.  "I couldn't.'

“How was it so easy, that time?”

“I don’t know.  Things are different now.”

“Things, what things?”

“Everything.  Everything’s different.”

“Like what?”

“I wanted something and you didn’t.”

“Cas,” Dean says, “Cas, you never said.  You never asked for anything.”

“It doesn’t really matter.  I wanted the talking and the dinners together and- everything,” Castiel says.  “I wanted all that, too, not just the sex.  I wanted to feel like I was there with you.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No.”

“Was it my fault?”

“I don’t think so.  I think maybe it was just me.”  Castiel is quiet for a long time.  “I wish we could have been better for each other,” Castiel says finally.

“Yeah,” Dean says.  “Me too.”  He’s feeling brave, he doesn’t know why.  “Sometimes I think you might have been it for me,” Dean tells him.  “Sometimes I think we could have been everything to each other.”

“You are everything to me,” Castiel says.  Like he really means it.

“You don’t act like it.”

“You never believe me, when I say it.”

“We’re getting nowhere,” Dean says.  “Again.  We keep going around in circles, but we can’t seem to meet anywhere.”

“I don’t know where you are.”  Castiel hangs up.

That night, Dean dreams he's in a boat on a river and the water is rising, rising over his head and he wants to cry with fear, he wants to so badly and he can't.  He never can.  He wakes with a half-sob in his throat, but his eyes are dry.

 

* * *

 

Castiel calls him one night, a week or so later.  Dean is flipping through channels.  He turns off the television when he hears Castiel’s voice.

“Tell me a story,” Castiel says.

“Cas-”

Castiel’s breathing is ragged over the line.  “Just...talk to me. Tell me a story.”  Castiel’s words come out choked.  Dean suddenly thinks, Is he--?

“Are you crying?” he asks slowly.

“It hurts so much,” Castiel says.  

“Are you hurt? Cas?  Castiel?”

“No,” Castiel says.  “Just- sad.  I think that’s the word for it.  Please.  Just talk to me.”

So Dean tells him about not crying.  He tells Castiel Dean hasn’t cried since he was four years old, in the car on the way back to the motel after his mother’s funeral, and his father had turned around in the front seat and slapped him across the face.

“Stop it,” his father had said.  “Control yourself.”  He tells Castiel about the feel of his father’s hand on his cheek.  How the sting of it stayed there, long after the redness faded.  How he had kept touching his cheek the rest of that day, just to feel the sting of it. To make sure it still hurt.  He tells Castiel how it felt.  Dean remembers squeezing his eyes shut as hard as he could.  He remembers digging the heel of his hands into his eyes to stop the tears and holding his breath to stop the sobs, but the tears kept coming, and he was choking on his own breath. He tells Castiel that he can’t cry now.  The most he can shake loose is a single tear or two.  He tells Castiel that Dean doesn't cry but he would hold Sam when he would, and Dean would tell him it’s okay, that it would be over soon.  He tells Castiel that, too.  

He tells Castiel that Sam cries for him, when he can’t do it for himself.  Like when Dean was twelve and Sam was eight, and John had been gone for six days.  They had been playing in the trash cans by the parking lot, and Dean had stepped on a nail coming out of a rotten board.  It went right through the sole of Dean’s worn-out sneaker.  Dean had pulled it out himself. Don’t look, he kept telling Sam through gritted teeth, just don’t look, it doesn’t hurt.  But Sam had crouched down beside, his eyes filled with tears.  Don’t look, Dean had said.  Don't look, Sam.  It doesn’t hurt.

“It’s horrible,” Castiel is saying.  “It’s horrible, to live without a soul.  To eat and sleep and fuck and not feel anything.  I hate it.  I wish I was dead.”

“You don’t want that,” Dean says.  “You don’t want a soul.”

Castiel is crying. Dean can’t bear to listen to it, somehow.  He just can’t.  It makes him angry.  Castiel says, “I don’t think I can live in this world without a soul.”

“You’re lucky,” Dean says.  “You’re so lucky and you don’t even know it.  I wish I didn’t have one.  I wish I wouldn’t hurt all the time.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.  I have nothing,” Castiel says.  “Nothing of my own.  Not even a soul.”

“I can’t do this,” Dean says into the phone.  “I can’t listen to this.”

“Dean--”

He hangs up.  

His hands are shaking.  Just like before a storm.  He doesn’t have to glance out the window to feel it when the lightning strikes outside.

He drinks and drinks until his head aches.  Then he fires off one of his chickenshit texts to Castiel.  It just says I'm sorry.  I miss you.  He doesn’t stay up to wait for an answer.  He puts his head against his pillow and passes the fuck out.

There’s a message on his phone the next morning.  I miss you too.  Then what’s the point of this? Dean wants to yell.  But he can’t.  He’s too afraid of the way his head is pounding.  So he laughs and takes two advil and goes back to bed.

It’s cold tonight.  Dean can’t stop shivering. He lies down on his bed and crawls under the blankets and sheets of his bed but he can’t stop shaking.  It feels like it’s never going to stop raining.  Like nothing will ever be good again.  

That night Dean dreams that he is crying, for the first time since he was four years old.  He dreams that he is sitting on his bed, looking at Castiel’s back standing there in the doorway, and the tears start coming, rolling down his face.  He brings up his hands and hide his face but the tears keep coming and Castiel is just looking at him, asking, What’s wrong? Why are you crying?  And all Dean can say is I don’t know.  He says it over and over.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Dean’s thinking about him again.  And when Castiel calls, he knows he shouldn’t, but he goes anyway.

 

* * *

 

He meets him halfway, at a tiny motel with neon palms and pink stucco walls.  They don't say much, but when Dean parks the car in the motel parking lot and starts walking toward the Continental, Castiel walks to meet him.

It’s much, much later that night when Dean hears him say it.  He’s almost asleep and Castiel’s hand settles down on top of his head.  I love you, Castiel murmurs.

That old ache is back again behind his eyes.  Dean holds himself very very still.  He presses his mouth firm and squeezes his eyes shut and holds himself on the edge of the bed.  He doesn’t say it back.

The next morning, he turns his face away from Castiel’s bare back.  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says out loud, because he’s a coward, he always has been.  “Don’t call me again.”

 

* * *

 

It rains, wherever Dean goes.  He passes through towns and cities and dark clouds are hanging in his rearview mirror.  He drives through the desert and brings the rain with him.  He stays in Owl Creek for three weeks, and it floods, everyone says there's never been anything like it.  Dean can walk outside and stop for a moment and water rises up to meet him, all the way up to th toe of his boots.

Dean drives.  He stops when he needs to, for food and gas and sleep.  He stops at a Starlite Motel and turns on the television and lets it play in the background, but he doesn’t sleep.  He sits through the 6 o’clock news and the local weather report.  The weatherman says there’s only a ten percent chance of rain for the next four days, but Dean knows it’s bullshit.  There’s nothing but rain as far as he can tell.  

Sam meets him in Grand Falls a few weeks later.  He’s got a motel already.  Dean finds his Prius in the parking lot and parks the Impala next to it.  He falls down on his double and goes straight to sleep.

He wakes up hearing voices.  Sam is on the phone.  He’s sitting on the other bed, his back to Dean.

“It’s for you,” Sam says.  Dean shakes his head.  He can hear Castiel’s voice across the room.  Cas’s voice is breathy, tinny on the other line.  He’s asking for Dean, Sam says.  Castiel hadn’t called Dean’s phone.  He only calls Sam, now.  Dean doesn’t get why Castiel is asking for him.  It’s stupid, but there’s something stirring in his chest.  It feels like hope, maybe.  Dean pushes back against the stirring, but reaches under his bed and pulls out his duffel bag anyway.  He throws in socks, underwear, shirts. Cas isn’t asking for him, but there’s one thing Dean knows how to listen to, and it’s the heated raw sensation he always knows means he’s leaving.

He goes into the bathroom and turns on the faucet.  He listens to Sam’s voice, small and far away, heard through the spray of the water.  He hears Sam say, clear and distinct, he hears Sam say, Yeah, Cas, we miss you too. He sounds like he could be anybody. He sounds like he could be someone else’s brother. Someone else’s friend.  Dean shuts off the tap and the water runs slower and then stops, dripping flatly on the cracked porcelain tiles.  Sam says, He’ll be there soon.

Sam looks up when he walks outside.  He says, “He needs you.”

Dean looks up at that. “He said that?” he asks.  “He said that, really?”

“Yeah.”

“He wouldn’t say that.”

“Dean,” Sam says, and Dean’s forced to look at him.  “It’s bad.  He needs you.”

Dean thinks about it. Cas is out there all alone, and he needs Dean. It doesn’t quite fit with the world Dean knows firsthand; it’s doesn’t match exactly.  But maybe it could, with a some adjustments.

“He wouldn’t mean it, even if he did.”

“Dean,” Sam says again.  “You need to go.”

Dean goes.

 

* * *

 

By the time Dean gets to him, it's already night. Castiel’s car is parked on the side of the highway.  Dean can see him inside the car, caught in the light of the Impala’s headlights.  His head is thrown back against the back of the seat.  His eyes are closed.

Dean pulls over and throws the car into park.  He’s trying to open the Continental’s doors, but they’re locked, all of them.  Castiel isn’t moving.  

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dean says, and pounds his fist against the window.  Castiel opens his eyes slowly and blinks at him.  He unlatches his door.  Dean yanks it open and slides inside.

“What hurts?” Dean keeps asking him, “Castiel, what hurts?”  but Castiel is just panting and holding his arms against his side.  He’s shaking his head.  “Talk to me.”

Castiel closes his eyes.  “I think I broke a rib,” he says.  "Dean, it hurts so much."

"What the  _fuck_ were you doing?  You didn't even tell Sam what you were hunting, or where you were. _Fuck_."

Castiel keeps panting.  "I wanted to do something.  I wanted to feel alive."

Dean keeps his hands on Castiel’s shoulders.  He hasn’t asked Dean to move them, yet.  “Do you want me to take you to a hospital?” Dean asks him.

“No,” Castiel grits out.  “No hospital.  Just take me back.”

“Back where?” Dean asks.  “Back to the cabin?  It's not that far.”

Castiel opens his eyes, finally.  “The cabin,” Castiel says.  "That's fine."

Dean’s broken ribs before, he knows how it hurts.  He knows that standing up is terrible, that lying down is worse, that sitting in a car and feeling every bump in the road can make it the worst trip of your life.  So he lifts Castiel to his feet, waits for him to get his breath back, and then lets go.  Castiel walks back to the Impala just fine, but it hurts him to get in.  Dean can tell.  Castiel leans back against the seat and closes his eyes again.  

“The cabin?” Dean asks again, just to make sure.

“Just drive,” Castiel says.

Dean drives.

He has to help ease Castiel out of car and then he has to help ease Castiel up the stairs of the cabin's porch and then down onto one of the lower bunks.  He has to help ease Castiel out of his jacket and shirt.  Dean crouches down on the rug by the bed and points the lamp on the nightstand at Castiel.  The skin around his right side is already mottling black and blue.  Dean strokes a finger over the dark spot and Castiel hisses a breath between his teeth.  “Sorry, sorry,” Dean says.

“That _hurts_ , Dean.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Dean says, over and over.  He puts his hand down on Castiel’s ribs and covers the bruise.  Dean doesn’t have to ease his other hand up and down Castiel’s arm, but he does anyway.  He lets it come to a stop on Castiel’s shoulder.

“You want to go to the hospital?” he asks, one last time.

“No,” Castiel says, predictably.  “I just want to be here.  Just leave me alone.”

Dean pulls back his hands.  “Sorry,” he says.

“It’s not your _fault_ ,” Castiel says.  “It just happened.”

“Yeah, well.”   Dean gets him and ice pack and couple of ibuprofen and leaves Castiel with the remote while he takes a shower.  

When he gets out, Castiel looks over at him.  He doesn’t look away.  Castiel doesn’t usually look at him like that.  It makes Dean feel self-conscious.  

“I want to take a shower,” Castiel says.  “Can you help me?”

Dean swallows.  “Yeah,” he says.  “Sure thing.”

They’ve showered together before.  Quick five-minute showers right after hunts, just long enough to get wet and wash their hair and run a bar of soap over all the parts that matter.  It’s never been anything more.  

Castiel holds his arm as he climbs out of his jeans, and again as he’s stepping over the edge of the bathtub into the shower.  Dean drops his towel and climbs in behind him and closes the shower curtain.  Dean's been collecting hotel shampoo bottles for years, they're lined up all along the edge of the tub.  Castiel picks a tiny pink bottle of shampoo, holds it in his hand.  Dean takes it from him.

“Hey,” Castiel protests.

“Just shut up and let me do something nice for you,” Dean says.  “For once.”  He opens the bottle and pours a little bit of shampoo in his hands, and then starts running his fingers through Castiel’s hair.  

“You’re getting it in my eyes.”

“Sorry,” Dean says.  “Sorry.”

“Stop.” Castiel pushes his hands away.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean says loudly, and gets out of the shower.  “You’re fucking impossible.”  He lets the bathroom door slam behind him.  

He’s sitting on the bed watching television when the shower stops running.  

“I need help,” Castiel says, muffled through the walls.  Dean doesn’t move.  “ _Dean._ ”

Dean opens the door, too fast.  Castiel jerks back. He’s gotten his pants on, but that’s it.  “What do you want?”  Dean asks.

Castiel is breathing hard and shallow.  “I can’t...get my socks on.”

“Fine.”  Dean takes the socks out of his hand and crouches on the bathroom floor.  The tiles are wet.  He figures once Castiel gets his socks on, it’s his problem.  Castiel hangs on to the sink and lifts one foot.  Dean slides the sock over his foot and tugs it upward.  Castiel puts his foot down and raises his other foot.  Dean does the same thing.  

Dean doesn’t get up from the floor right away.  Castiel stays standing over him.  “I didn’t mean to make you leave,” Castiel says, quiet.

“You’re being a fucking asshole,” Dean says without heat.

“I hurt.”

“Go hurt in bed.”

Dean gets off the floor and lets Castiel push past him, shuffling towards the bed.  “I need my shirt,” Castiel says.

“Stop bitching at me and I’ll get it for you,” Dean snaps back. Dean feels strange, so strange.  He’s looking at Castiel battered and bruised, and he doesn’t feeling anything for him. Shouldn't seeing Castiel hurt make him feel bad? Shouldn’t making Castiel angry ought to make him feel something?  Shouldn’t there be passion, or something?  All he really feels right now is tiredness.  He just wants Castiel to leave him alone.  And he keeps thinking, This isn’t how it should be.  I should be nice to him.

He lies down beside Castiel.  Castiel isn’t looking at him.  Dean rolls over on his side, facing the wall.  The edge of the bed again.  

It might be minutes or hours later.  But Castiel is switching on his lamp.  The light casts shadows in the corners of the room.  “I can’t do this,” Castiel says.  He sits up.  Dean feels the way his entire body is tense with the effort.  Castiel pushes himself up to his feet.  He doesn’t cry out.  “I can’t sleep here with you.  Like this.”

“We keep doing this,” says Dean.  “We keep ending up here, just like this. Don’t you think it means something?”

Castiel shakes his head.  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Castiel argues.  “It’s just sex.”

“You don’t feel that way.  Not really.”

“You don’t know how I feel.  You don’t even love me,” Castiel says.

Dean says, “You’re right.  We’re not in love.  You don’t know what love is.  You can’t feel anything.  I could throw rocks at you and you wouldn’t feel it.”

“I hate you,” Castiel says.

“Right now I don't like you much either.”  It's funny.  Dean is saying that, and the whole time he's thinking, This isn't how it's supposed to be.  We're supposed to be in love.  We’re supposed to be nice to each other.  This isn’t how it should be.  “Fine,” Dean says.  “Get out of here, then.”

He stays staring at the wall.  The door opens and then slams shut and then there's Castiel footsteps on the porch.  Dean keeps waiting for Castiel to come back inside.  There's no where else for him to go.  But Castiel never does come back.  Fine.  He'll sulk on the porch all night.  Dean doesn’t roll over, even when it’s clear Castiel’s gone.  He keeps to his side.  Doesn’t even roll over to turn out the lamp.  

This is how it always goes, he thinks.  This is how it always ends.  Every fucking time.  His whole body hurts, but Dean doesn’t cry.  He just can’t.  

 

* * *

 

He falls asleep and dreams of rain, rain everywhere, rain pouring down from the heavens until the roads are washed out, until the water rises to cover the houses.  He dreams of drowning.

Dean wakes up with rainwater in his mouth, with rainwater dripping down his cheeks, and he thinks, Cas.  He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands, and the rainwater keeps falling down his face.  He can feel the wetness spreading through his fingers.  I can’t live like this, he’s thinking.  I can’t live with it ending like this.  The rain falls and falls.  It soaks his shirt.

He hurts and hurts and he doesn't know why.  He hurts too much for just one person, all over his body, his hands and chest and ribs and legs, he's aching everywhere and it's all because of this fucking rain.  This fucking rain that won't stop, won't leave, follows him wherever he goes and suddenly Dean thinking of impossible things.  Like wildfires that won't go out.  Shallow water deep enough to drown in.  Rain that won't stop.  Impossible things, all of them.  Castiel is one.  Impossible to get along with, impossible to share a bed with.  Angry and empty and beyond Dean's comprehension, and so full of sadness that it is leaking out of him.

Dean throws on his clothes, runs to the door.  

The rain goes with him.

 

* * *

 

The river runs behind the cabin, beyond a wooded slope and past a gully with ferns and bracken.  The water is still and deep here.  It's a good spot for fishing, Bobby always said.  Now the water is creeping closer, up the slope, lapping at the foundations of the cabin.  You step off the porch, and the water is inches away from your shoes.  The cabin's the highest point around.  He can’t see much past the rain, but it looks like further down the driveway the road's washed out.    

Castiel is standing at the edge of the water.  The water is rising, and Dean is afraid.    

He says Castiel's name, softly at first, and then louder, and Castiel turns slightly.

"It’s still raining,” Castiel notes.

“It’s because of you,” Dean tells him.  “That’s why.”  He moves closer. He doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to know.  He thinks there might be depths to Castiel’s hurt that he is too afraid to see.  But he can’t pretend he doesn’t notice it anymore.  The whole earth is crying, and it’s Castiel.  He can’t look away from this.  So he asks anyway.  “Cas, are you hurting?”

Castiel stands very still.  “They are all hurting. All the angels, here on earth.  They are in pain because of me.”  He looks up at Dean, for the first time.  “I never meant for this to happen.”  

Castiel covers his face with his hands.  Dean can’t understand it at first.  Then he sees the way Castiel’s shoulders are moving jerkily and he realizes: Castiel is crying.  He doesn’t know what to do.  He thinks about putting a hand on Castiel’s shoulder.  That’s what friends do for each other.  But he can’t.  He wraps his arms around his chest and holds himself tight.  He thinks all Castiel's sadness might wash him away if Dean can't reach him somehow.  But he doesn't know how to bridge the distance.  

“I’m broken,” Castiel says.  

“No, you’re not,” Dean says.  It comes out sounding almost like a sob.  “You’re- you’re just perfect.  Just like you are.  I’m sorry I ever said you weren’t.  I didn’t mean it, Cas.  I wish I hadn’t said that.  Please.”

"You meant to say it.  You wanted to hurt me.  Why do we keep ending up like this?” Castiel asks.  "We are together and then we hurt each other, and then we are apart.  I don't know what to do to fix it."

He is looking at Dean, and his eyes are so sad, and Dean loves him.  All his impossibilities and pain and sorrow and guilt, Dean loves it all, and there's no good reason for it.  Maybe Castiel is right, about what it means to not possess a soul.  Maybe Castiel will never give him what he needs.  But he guesses it's not about whether or not Castiel loves him back.  Dean loves him regardless.  Dean wants to ease his pain, even if it means giving something he'll never get back.  Maybe this is what love is.  Taking risks.

“I know we weren’t good together,” Dean says.  He’s trying to tell the truth, as clearly as he can.  He says, “But I would have kept on going, just like that.  I never wanted to not be with you.”  It’s the truest thing he can think of to say.  

“What are you trying to tell me?” Castiel asks.

“That I love you,” Dean says.  “That’s all.”  Dean puts out his hand and takes Castiel's hand.  An olive branch.  

“I don’t have a soul,” Castiel says, “I can’t love you back.  Not the right way.”

“I don’t believe that,” Dean tells him.  “Not even a little.  You get pissed at me when I don’t listen to you.  You get hurt when I yell at you.  You touched my face once, not like- not for sex.  It was something else.  You feel things.  You couldn’t do that without a soul, Cas.”

“Let go, Dean,” Castiel says.

“Not this time,” says Dean.  “Oh, god.  I love you.”  It hurts to say it.  It hurts because Castiel might not say it back.  It's this rain, it makes everything hurt so much.  There's rainwater sliding down his cheeks, catching in his lashes.  He closes his eyes and squeezes them tight.  

“You’re crying,” Castiel says.  There’s wonder in his voice.  

Dean says hoarsely, “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”  Dean feels a warm hand on his cheek.  Touching the wetness there.

“I don’t cry.  Never have.”

“You’re crying right now.”

“I’m not.”

Dean hurts, everywhere, everywhere.  All his old unhealed wounds won't just disappear.  But maybe he could just let them pass away, water under the bridge.  Let the rain wash away everything that hurts, and then start over.  And maybe then they could start to heal. 

“You’d still want me back? Even after everything I’ve done?” Castiel asks.

“Yes.”

“I hurt you.”

“We’ve hurt each other.”

“I left you.”

“We can weather this,” Dean says.  “It doesn’t have to end here.”

“Don’t hold out on me,” Castiel says.  “Can you promise me that?  I want to know, Dean.  I want to know when you’re sad, or lonely, or happy.  I want to know.  So don’t leave me out.”

“I promise,” Dean says.  The rain's still falling, just a fine mist, but the sun is rising.  Dean sees a ray of light break through the clouds and change into a banner of every color.  Maybe it’ll be a fucking glorious day: blue skies and white clouds and warm sun; he can almost feel the warmth of it spreading through his body.

“The weather’s changed,” Castiel says.  

“There’s a wind coming in from the east,” Dean says.  “We’ll be all right now.”

“How do you know?”

Dean’s curling the last three fingers of his hand to his palm.  “I just do,” Dean says.  

 

Castiel is holding his hand when the rain stops, and the sun comes out again.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank [celestialrebel](http://celestialrebel.tumblr.com) for her exquisite artwork. A special thank you to my lovely beta readers, [marianthehawke](http://marianthehawke.tumblr.com), [mishcollin](http://mishcollin.tumblr.com), and [ozonecologne](http://ozonecologne.tumblr.com). 
> 
> This story is dedicated to [dustlines](http://dustlines.tumblr.com), since without her insight, enthusiasm, and dedication, this story would only be a speckling of dust motes floating over my head. She is an amazing friend and editor.
> 
> You can view celestialrebel's gorgeous watercolor artwork [here](https://celestialrebel.tumblr.com/post/151358504481/art-masterpost-for-let-the-waters-rise-by).
> 
> You can listen to the 8tracks mix [here](http://8tracks.com/blackeyedsuzy/let-the-waters-rise).
> 
> [Author's tumblr](http://outpastthemoat.tumblr.com) | [Artist's tumblr](http://celestialrebel.tumblr.com)


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